Troubleshooting Failed Crypto Initialization for file_get_contents() with OPENSSL

When encountering the error "Failed to enable crypto" while using file_get_contents() with OPENSSL, it's crucial to investigate the underlying issue.

Identifying the Root Cause

The provided error log suggests a timeout during crypto initialization. However, the problem may lie elsewhere. One possible cause is that the website uses an unsupported SSL version, such as SSLv3.

Solution Using cURL

To bypass the limitations of file_get_contents() and enable SSLv3 support, it's recommended to use cURL instead:

function getSSLPage($url) {
    $ch = curl_init();
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSLVERSION, 3); 
    $result = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $result;
}

var_dump(getSSLPage("https://eresearch.fidelity.com/eresearch/evaluate/analystsOpinionsReport.jhtml?symbols=api"));

This solution explicitly sets the SSL version to v3, allowing curl to handle the SSL handshake successfully.

Additional Considerations for Windows Users

For Windows users, it may also be necessary to specify the location of root certificates for curl. This can be achieved by:

curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CAINFO, __DIR__ . "/certs/cacert.pem");
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, true);

By setting the CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER option to true, curl will verify the peer's certificate against the specified root certificates.